Marlins unite us -- unless they lose
By Dave Barry
I'm a huge Marlins fan. I've been following this plucky team ever since they beat the San Francisco Giants, which was, what, nearly a week ago. I live and die by this team! When they win, I drink champagne and dance all night. This is also what I do when they lose, because there is no point in wasting champagne. But I dance in a more subdued manner.
The last time I was a huge Marlins fan was October 18 through 26, 1997, which happens to be exactly when the Marlins won the World Series against the Cleveland Native Americans. I'm not taking all the credit for that victory: Many Marlins players were also involved.
But I was in the stands for game seven, and when the score was tied in the bottom of the 11th inning, with two out and the potential game-winning Marlin run on third base, I decided that if I buttoned a certain button on my shirt, it might cause the Marlins to get a base hit. A bold tactical gamble? Yes. But it paid off, and the Marlins won, and South Florida erupted in a joyous celebration that lasted until 2:30 the following afternoon, at which time owner Wayne ''The Antichrist'' Huizenga sold all the good players.
But that is the distant past. Today South Florida is, once again, totally and permanently united, for the time being, behind this spunky young Marlins team and its plucky players, including one named ''Pudge'' and another one named ``Spooneybarger.''
CUBS DON'T WIN
You'd think everyone would be rooting for this spunky team, but you'd be wrong. Everyone else in the entire world (including, in a formal statement released today, the Pope) is rooting for the Chicago Cubs. Why? Because, historically, the Cubs stink. They have not won anything for centuries. They are the only team in the National League that fought for the South in the Civil War.
So now everybody is making a big deal about the Cubs, and their fans who've been loyally supporting them through decade after decade of losing -- as if we should APPLAUD them because they wasted generations of perfectly good fan energy rooting for a team that traditionally had as much chance of winning the World Series as the von Trapp Family Singers, with Julie Andrews pitching.
HITTING THE WALL
Does this make any sense? Let's say you're at a restaurant, and you see a man stagger away from the bar and walk directly into the wall, mistaking it for a door, banging his face and falling down, only to pick himself up and walk into the wall again, and then again, over and over. Would you say to yourself: ``I admire that man! He is loyal to the tactic of walking into the wall, in the hope that it eventually will turn into a door!'
No! You'd say: ``He must be a Cubs fan.''
Ha ha! I'm kidding, of course: A true Cubs fan would never leave the bar. But my point is that we South Florida fans deserve some credit for displaying discretion. Yes, we're loyal to our local teams. But if, after a reasonable period of loyalty -- generally, two days -- we perceive that a given local team is unlikely to win a national or world championship, we drop that team like a used napkin and move on to another team, or another sport, or a mall.
IVY-LESS STADIUM
But for now, we're committed to our Marlins, and we'll be out rooting for them this weekend in Formerly Joe Robbie Stadium. Oh, sure, it's not historic Wrigley Field, with the ivy growing on the walls.
This is actually a sign of poor maintenance, but it causes baseball writers -- who spend their entire lives in dingy press boxes where the only green organic thing they ever see is relish -- to spurt little prose orgasms. Wow! Wall vegetation!
Listen, baseball writers: If you like wildlife, South Florida has WAY more wildlife than Chicago! It would not surprise anybody down here if, during a game, a third-base coach was eaten by an alligator.
But it's no use arguing South Florida's merits: Nobody wants us to win, except us.
So let's do our part; let's all go out to Formerly Stadium and root, root, root for our Marlins. Go ''Pudge!'' Go ''Spooneybarger!'' Go ``whoever the other Marlins players are!'
If they don't win, it's the mall.
